Firefly Beach

by Luanne Rice

  Caroline saw her family arrive. She hung back, watching. Caroline did not know what to say to Skye. She knew her so well and loved her so much. But somehow they had lost the ability to communicate. Their last few times together, they might as well have been speaking different languages.

  “Caroline!” Augusta called, spotting her.

  Smiling, Caroline went to join her family. Augusta looked mischievous, dressed in her harlequin costume and her black pearls. Everyone rose, and she kissed her mother, her sisters, and their husbands. They complimented one another on their costumes, and everyone remarked on the beautiful job Caroline had done with the ball.

  “Your father would be so proud,” Augusta said, squeezing her hand. Behind her harlequin mask, her eyes glistened. Augusta grew more sentimental every year. “You should give yourself a lot of credit, honey.”

  “Thanks, Mom,” Caroline said, pleased. Her parents’ approval had always mattered to her and it always would.

  “That dress,” Augusta said, gazing at Caroline. “It’s remarkably like the one you wore…do you remember that sitting? On the porch at Firefly Hill?”

  “Yes, I remember.” How could she forget? It was late in the year, the last weekend before it snowed. Andrew Lockwood had been dead a month, and the family was in shock. It was the last real painting her father had ever done. When he completed Girl in a White Dress, he put away his paints for good.

  “It finished him, Caroline,” Augusta said.

  “What did?”

  “That painting. It took all he had. When he was done, he said he had nothing left inside. He was never really himself after that. But he caught something….”

  Caroline took a second look at her mother. She sounded bitter, as if Caroline’s costume had reminded her of too much loss, misfortune, and injustice regarding her and Hugh.

  “Caught what?”

  “That quality you have inside. That reserve…”

  “My coldness?” Caroline said with a touch of fear, remembering what Skye had said, wanting to be contradicted.

  “No. You were young and emotional, and you were holding it all inside. The effect was very mysterious and alluring. I remember looking at the face your father painted and knowing the world would think he was in love with her. The girl in the picture.”

  “Mom!” Caroline said.

  Augusta turned away to hide the harsh disappointment in her eyes. If Caroline hadn’t known better, she would have said her mother’s sour tone was jealousy. But it couldn’t be.

  “Girl in a White Dress. You look beautiful,” Skye said quietly. She had a glass in her hand; it looked like mineral water.

  “So do you,” Caroline said.

  They were shy with each other, two dogs circling. Clea leaned forward. “Listen,” she said. The band was playing “Goodnight, My Someone.” Skye had sung it in eighth grade, in her spring concert, and Caroline and Clea had skipped out of high school to sneak in and hear her. The song united the sisters in an old memory, and Caroline and Skye tried to smile at each other.

  “Goodness,” Augusta said. “Look!”

  The crew from the Meteor had arrived. A band of pirates, dressed in torn shirts, eye patches, and salty trousers, they shouldered their way through the crowd to the bar. Polite clusters of guests parted quickly, as if the men were real pirates. The crewmates grouped at the bar, grabbing beers and surveying the party.

  “Are they supposed to be here?” Augusta asked dubiously.

  “They’re friends of Caroline’s,” Clea said.

  The skinniest pirate slapped his beer down on the bar and began making his way over. He moved with purpose, homing in on Caroline, as if he were swinging across the deck on a shredded topgallant. Dressed with a red kerchief tied over his short blond hair, a white shirt with comically billowing arms, Sam stood before Caroline with his hands on his hips.

  “Ahoy!” he said. He had an eye patch over the left lens of his wire-rimmed glasses.

  “Hi, Sam,” Caroline said. “This is my family. Everyone, this is Sam Trevor.” She sounded normal, and she smiled at Sam, but inside she felt something change. Sam was here, and so was Joe, and Joe’s presence made everything different.

  “I’m here to keep up the bad name of pirates everywhere,” Sam said apologetically.

  “By doing what?”

  “Kidnapping you,” Sam said, holding out his hand, “for a dance.”

  Caroline followed Sam onto the dance floor. The band was playing medium-slow, and they had plenty of room to move. Sam did his best; he really did. He knew where to put his hands and how to move his feet, but he lurched to a completely different rhythm than Caroline and the music. Caroline saw the embarrassment in his face. She adjusted her movement to his, overwhelmingly fond of him for trying.

  “Sorry,” he said, his face red.

  “For what? I wanted to dance with you,” Caroline said.

  “It’s dangerous, dancing with me,” Sam said. “I trip.”

  “Do you like music?”

  “I love it,” he said.

  “That’s all that counts,” Caroline said as if she were talking to a younger brother. “Just enjoy yourself.”

  “Thanks,” Sam said. They danced silently for a minute. His muscles relaxed slightly, and he didn’t seem as tense. But his rhythm was just as bad. As they moved around the dance floor, Caroline looked through the crowd. She saw the pirates drinking at the bar, but she didn’t see Joe.

  “How’s the wreck?” Caroline asked.

  “Cool. I dove on it twice this week. Joe took me down.”

  “Oh. Is he…”

  There he was, the head pirate. Joe Connor stood off to the side, leaning against a tree. He wore a white shirt, ripped at the shoulders and chest. His black pants were tight, his feet were bare. He had on a black hat, low over one eye. The sight of him made Caroline shiver, as if the temperature had just dropped twenty degrees.

  “We found skeletal remains,” Sam was saying. “Partially buried in sediment and remarkably well preserved. We’ve retrieved quite a bit of the gold, in fact….”

  As Sam spoke, he became more excited and his dancing deteriorated. They wheeled around, and Caroline lost sight of Joe. When Sam twirled her back, she saw him again. He had started to move through the crowd. His blue eyes were dark, and they were on her. People stepped aside, watching him pass. He had an air of serious danger about him, as real as any pirate’s.

  The night smelled of honeysuckle and rosemary. Sam saw Joe coming, and he grinned. Caroline felt the heat spread through her chest.

  “Would you like to dance?” Joe asked, looking straight at her.

  “I have to let him, or he’ll make me walk the plank,” Sam said, stepping aside.

  Caroline stood still, listening to the music play. People danced around them, jostling her. She was dimly aware of them and of Sam walking away. Joe watched her with dark eyes. He didn’t appear to expect or want anything. He might have been a stranger, cutting in. Caroline nodded. Joe stepped forward, took her into his arms.

  His body curved over hers, and she had to steady herself, catching her breath. They danced together, so close she could feel his breath warm against her ear. The music was slow and sweet. They did not speak, but Caroline loved the way they moved, like grass in a current, with grace and rhythm. Her throat ached, and she didn’t know why.

  “Thanks for dancing with Sam,” he said after a minute.

  “I wanted to,” she said, surprised.

  “The kid can’t dance. He’s got two left feet.”

  “He tries though. That’s the important thing,” Caroline said. Looking around Joe’s shoulder, she could see her family. Simon and Skye had left the table. She hoped they would come dance, but Simon headed for the bar, and Skye stood off to the side, watching.

  “Sam said you took him down to the wreck,” Caroline said, wanting to put Skye out of her mind for now.

  “Yeah.”

  “You showed him the bones?”

 
; “Yes,” Joe said, holding Caroline tighter.

  She felt his arms around her bare shoulders, his mouth against her ear. He held her hand against his chest in his rough and scraped hand. Her fingers trailed through the hair on his chest and rested against his warm skin. She felt the tension in her own body and sensed it in his. They stopped talking. The music played, and Caroline rested her cheek against Joe’s chest. She closed her eyes and wondered whether he could feel her heart pounding against his.

  Augusta milled around. She drank martinis. As Hugh Renwick’s widow she was a big hit. She found herself telling a group of young artists that the glass in her hand had actually once belonged to Hugh.

  “Hugh Renwick drank from that glass?” a young man asked reverently. Like Augusta, he was dressed as a Picasso: the bull in Guernica. He wore a silly, lopsided mask of papier-mâché, but he looked adorable from the neck down in toreador clothes.

  “Yes, he did,” Augusta lied. “Would you care to sip from Hugh’s hallowed goblet?”

  “If it would make me paint like Hugh Renwick,” the man said, eagerly taking the glass in both hands as if it were in some way holy, trying to make it meet his lips through the absurd bull mouth-hole.

  “I can’t guarantee that, dear,” Augusta said wryly. “Hugh would be very displeased with both of us, dressed as Picassos instead of Renwicks. He loathed Paul, you know.”

  “Paul?” the bull asked.

  “Picasso, dear,” Augusta said, glancing around for her daughters. There were Clea and Peter, so sweetly social, just as adult children should be at fancy dress balls. Skye had wandered off somewhere, making Augusta distinctly nervous. She spied Simon, flirting with a young waitress, drawing her out with that passive-aggressive depression of his. Caroline was dancing with someone, blocked from Augusta’s sight by the crowd.

  “I would have come as a Renwick,” the bull was saying, “but he did mainly landscapes and women. I didn’t feel like coming as a red barn or a nude female.”

  “One understands,” Augusta said, spotting Caroline. She excused herself from the bull and paused to watch her oldest daughter. Caroline looked exquisite tonight. She radiated from within; her skin glowed like a peach, her wide eyes were clear and beautiful, her white dress fit her perfectly. Augusta felt stinging remorse for the old jealousy she had felt earlier. But it was true: Girl in a White Dress, coming so soon after the death of that young man, had finished Hugh. And Augusta had so desperately wished it had been she in the portrait, her husband’s most famous picture.

  When the crowd parted, Augusta got a good look at the man Caroline was dancing with.

  He was the handsomest man Augusta Renwick had seen in years: over six feet tall with broad shoulders. He was one of the pirates. He looked physical enough to be a workman, but he carried it off with a sort of throwaway elegance. He had a sailor’s tan and the clearest blue eyes Augusta had ever seen. But the thing that shocked her was the way he was looking at Caroline. His expression was fierce and wild, full of craving and longing.

  “Mother?”

  Augusta felt Clea’s hand on her arm.

  “Darling, who is that man with Caroline?”

  “A pirate.”

  “I can see that. But who is he?”

  “Just a friend, I think. Mom, have you seen Skye?”

  “They’re acting like lovers. Just look at the way he’s staring at her.”

  “It’s a slow dance. Mom…”

  “I’m looking for Skye myself,” Augusta said. She tore her gaze away from Caroline and her pirate to glance around. She sipped her martini, feeling disturbed. Was it more jealousy or just missing Hugh? She looked over again. The yearning in the man’s eyes was matched by that in Caroline’s and reminded Augusta of how passionately she had desired her husband, how intensely she had feared losing him.

  “She seemed quiet,” Clea said. “Is she upset about something?”

  Augusta sighed. Why couldn’t they just have fun? Why did everything have to become so serious and moody? She hadn’t raised her girls this way. She had given them free rein.

  While other mothers watched every move, Augusta had let her daughters explore and grow. She had fought her protective instincts and allowed Hugh to take the girls hunting. He had wanted to teach them to fend for themselves, and she thought he had done it. All those nights alone on the mountain! Yet here they were, worried about Skye just because she had wandered out of sight.

  “I’m sure she’s fine,” Augusta said.

  “Look at Simon,” Clea said.

  He was leading the waitress onto the dance floor. She had left her drink tray on a table, kicked her shoes off, melted into his arms. Simon was smoking a cigarette. He talked with it in his mouth, the blue smoke curling into his eyes. Augusta thought he looked evil, dirty, and stupid.

  “Why did Skye marry him?” Clea asked. “It’s as if she deliberately picked the one man who would treat her the worst.”

  Augusta groaned, watching Simon’s hands on the waitress’s hips. “Your father would kill him,” Augusta said.

  “He’d kill Skye,” Clea said. “He was so adamant about men, about us being strong and not being victims of anyone. That’s all he wanted to teach us.”

  “He taught you,” Augusta said. Hugh had cheated on Augusta, claimed he couldn’t help himself, it was what men did. But more than anything, he had wanted to save his daughters from getting hurt.

  “Taught me?” Clea asked.

  “You married a good man. Dear Peter,” Augusta said. “You’re the only one. Skye married a bastard, and Caroline’s all alone.”

  But even as Augusta spoke, she and Clea watched Caroline on the dance floor in the arms of the pirate. He looked like everything Hugh Renwick would warn her against. He was big and cool, with a wicked sexual intensity, and he had his arms wrapped around Caroline as if he had hunted her down and intended to own her. But the strange thing, the factor Augusta couldn’t quite believe and had to check with a closer look, was the expression in his eyes.

  The pirate dancing with Augusta’s daughter looked for all the world as if he had fallen in love.

  The song ended. Caroline stepped back. Joe stood still, not saying anything. He wanted to ask her to dance again. But this was her inn and her ball, and she probably had a million things to do. Guys were milling around, probably wanting to dance with her. But she didn’t move. She just stood there. She was wearing that white dress Joe remembered from her father’s painting, and all he wanted was to take her down to the river alone and dance with her there.

  “Thank you,” he said finally.

  “Oh,” she said. “It was fun.”

  Joe stared at her. It was strange; he didn’t feel angry. Not at all. For the first time in a lot of years, he could think of Caroline Renwick and not feel the resentment rising. The opposite. He felt an unfamiliar tenderness, and it made him so uncomfortable he took a step backward.

  “Well,” she said.

  The music was starting again. The paper lanterns swung in a light gust of breeze. Joe cleared his throat. Caroline watched him, expectant. He reached into his pocket. He had brought something from the boat to show her, and his fingers closed around it now. He could ask her to dance again, hand it to her while they moved to the music. He could try to tell her what finding it had made him feel….

  Someone bumped him from behind.

  Her brother-in-law, the creep Joe had seen drinking with Skye at the bar one week before, jostled into Joe, then Caroline. The guy had the smell of booze and drugs coming out of him. He was so busy feeling up the girl he was dancing with, he hardly noticed his own clumsiness.

  “Oops,” the girl said, eye to eye with Caroline.

  “Where’s Skye?” Caroline asked Simon, ignoring the waitress.

  “She needed a walk,” Simon said, the cigarette still in his mouth. Joe wanted to jam it down his throat and tell him to go find his wife.

  “Dora, aren’t you supposed to be working?” Caroline asked, barely contr
olling her fury.

  “Sorry,” Dora said, flying off the dance floor.

  “I’m worried about Skye,” Caroline said to Simon. “I want us to find her.”

  “I’m not her keeper,” he said, watching the waitress from behind. “Neither are you.”

  “Doesn’t mean you can’t look for her,” Joe said. “Especially if your sister-in-law asks you to.”

  “Who the fuck—” Simon asked, aggression making the cords in his neck stand out. He had the look of a beater in his eyes. He was small and mean, and Joe hardly had to use his imagination to see him hitting Skye. Quietly, Joe put himself between Simon and Caroline.

  “Just look, Simon. Okay?” Caroline asked tensely.

  “Fine,” Simon said, throwing his cigarette on the floor. He walked away, leaving it burning. Caroline gave Joe an apologetic glance and followed him. Joe put out the cigarette in an ashtray on the bar. He stared after Caroline and then he went the other way. To look for Skye.

  The log stretched across the stream. It had been there for some time. Sticks, feathers, and debris had caught on stray branches protruding from one end. The stream flowed beneath the log, lazy and blackish-green, just before it widened and joined the Connecticut River. Pine trees grew thick along one bank, while reeds whispered along the other.

  Skye stood at one end of the log. The breeze ruffled her black dress. It tickled her bare legs. She watched the water move. A fish came to the surface, making rings in the dark water. Skye stared at the rings. She remembered a night on a different riverbank two hundred miles to the north. The stars had blazed low over the curving hills. Her father had dropped them off hungry, to make them hunt for their food. Sharpening a stick, she had waited in the rushes.

  The frog was fat. She knew she was supposed to kill it. Stabbing down, she impaled its white moon body. Her father had shown her how to build a fire, and he had told her that cooking a frog was no different than cooking a fish. But somehow it was. The big frog had sleepy eyes and a smiling mouth. After she stabbed it, it twitched and gasped. As weak and hungry as she was, Skye had gone without eating. She had killed an animal for nothing.